Why Nobody Wants to Visit Flatiron Building, Manhattan Anymore

Why Nobody Wants to Visit Flatiron Building, Manhattan Anymore In 1903, photographer Alfred Stieglitz stood in Madison Square Park on a foggy winter morning and took the photograph that would become one of the most famous architectural images in American history. The Flatiron Building rose from the mist like the prow of a ship cutting through the urban ocean of Manhattan. 22 stories. 285 feet. A steel frame designed to withstand four times the maximum wind load, clad in limestone and white-glazed terra cotta from the Atlantic Terra Cotta works on Staten Island, standing on a triangular plot at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway that every previous real estate developer had looked at and walked away from. The sharpest point of the building is only 6.5 feet wide. It was built in exactly one year, one floor per week, completed in 1902. The press called it Burnham’s Folly. The New York Times called it a monstrosity. New Yorkers placed bets on when the wind would blow it down.